Miss Misery (29 page)

“Here.” Ashleigh lifted her headphones over my head like she was knighting me. “See what you think.”

She had the volume up way too loud, of course, and I had to gesture wildly to make her lower it. But once she did, I could hear a gently plucked guitar line and some appropriately soppy vocals about only once letting me or only asking once or something like that. It reminded me of the “next week on…” preview at the end of overheated teen soap operas or the music from jeans commercials on cable, all spinning wheels and dusty roads and too much lip gloss. But there was a catch in the voice, a wobble and a waver to the shimmering melody, and I had to admit it wasn't unpleasant. I started to make a so-so gesture to Ashleigh, but she was looking at me with the intensity of a fourth-generation monk, so I dropped my hand. Some things were too important to joke about.

Then the chorus hit me like a brass-knuckled punch to the heart, and my throat went dry and I closed my eyes. It was technicolor and it was big and it was shameless.
Can we take a ride? / Get out of this place while we still have time?
And then it went tumbling over a waterfall of cascading
oh-ohs
before plunging me into another level of icy cool chorus beneath it. I had to get outside of myself to hear it, really hear it. This song was about escape, but not in the sense I could recognize. I had been locked in a room for months, but the locks were on my side of the door. I could have left at any time, but I made sure all three latches stayed firmly in place. Any romantic desperation, any keening choruses or sweeping nostalgia had been carefully balled up and placed on top of an already full trash can in my mind. Ashleigh, on the other hand, had been so desperate to get out that she had broken the door down with her own weak arms, taking nothing but a stuffed bear and some crackers with her. A song like this wasn't a passive soundtrack; it was hope personified. It was a promise. It was an escape much more real than the one I was turning her right back around from.

I wanted to tell her all of this, that the song had gotten to me, but it wasn't over yet, and I had a funny catch in the back of my throat, besides. When it did finally end, the last notes still ringing in my ears over the thrum of the airplane, I took the headphones off and handed them back with a smile.

“Did you like it?”

“I liked it,” I said. “You were right. They get it.”

Ashleigh grinned. “I told you.”

“Yeah, I just didn't listen.”

 

About two hours into the trip, the movie started. I hadn't expected anything worth watching, and my low expectations were rewarded with a “tear-jerking” romantic comedy about a cocky womanizer who finally meets his match in a spunky single mother whose bug-eyed, camera-mugging offspring happens to be a basketball prodigy who may or may not be able to talk to cats. Or at least that's what it appeared to be about without sound. Ashleigh clapped her hands eagerly and jammed her headphones into the armrest. I sighed and flipped through my book. Rulon Barber had a golly-gee-whiz tone to his writing but managed to cram a number of interesting facts into each sentence. I read about Brigham Young's settling of Salt Lake City in 1867 with the words “this is the right place,” the state's pride in its rapidly expanding population, and the light-rail system that connects the University of Utah with downtown. I glanced at the annual calendar in the front of the book and saw that every Fourth of July weekend something called the Northern Ute Pow-Wow was held in someplace called Fort Duchesne. Barber called it “one of the biggest pow-wows in the West.” Big words, Rulon, I thought. It's a shame I'll have to miss it. I read on from Barber's overheated introduction:

I tut-tutted and closed the cover. Easy on the exclamation points, Rulon. You're providing a service, not selling mattresses. I checked out Barber's photo on the back of the book and found pretty much what I expected: middle-aged man in a crew cut with a neck as thick as his head wearing aviator shades and a shit-eating grin. Ah, Rulon, I thought. It's the glamorous writer's life for us, isn't it?

Still, I had nothing better to do and no love for crossword puzzles, so I read on, trying my best to familiarize myself with the LDS Church, which so thoroughly dominated the state. I did some due diligence on Brigham Young University, where Ashleigh's parents thought she was spending the weekend. It was located about sixty miles to the south of Salt Lake in the town of Provo and sounded like the least collegiate university in America: There was no drinking, no smoking, no caffeine, and no fraternizing with the opposite sex. Seeing how those were the four pillars of most people's higher education, I was at a loss trying to imagine what being a student there would entail. I imagined there was a lot of studying. And masturbation.

Throughout the movie, Ashleigh laughed uproariously and occasionally shook my arm to draw my attention to the screen. I just smiled and nodded. For such an unhappy person, she certainly laughed a lot. The stewardess had taken a shine to us ever since she'd found out we were “engaged,” so she kept Ashleigh flush with Dr. Pepper and me flush with Amstel Light. Eventually, I even managed to doze off.

I woke up an hour or so before we landed when a passing thunderstorm caused a neck-snapping bout of turbulence. It reminded me of the roller coaster from the morning, the same dipping and slipping, the same churning sensation in the pit of my gut. Ashleigh didn't take it well, clamping her lower lip firmly underneath her teeth and making a worried, mewling sound. She turned up the volume on her Discman, grabbed my arm, and buried her face in it. As always, traveling with a nervous flyer made me more calm. It had always been that way. Being cast in the role of the brave one made me try harder to live up to it. I stroked Ashleigh's arm in what I hoped was a paternal way and waited for the bumpiness to stop.

 

I don't know for sure what I was expecting to see when we stepped off the jetway and into Salt Lake City International Airport, but I suppose the image in my mind was something between a John Wayne movie and the Rapture. What greeted us instead was an airport, no different from the one we had left five-plus hours before. The same newsstands, the same crappy theme restaurants. Even the same Grovestand health-food kiosk selling what looked to be the same decades-old mixed nuts. The typical American mass-transit innocuous inoculation. I yawned and stretched and watched Ashleigh's bag while she went to the bathroom.

It was seven p.m. local time. Through the windows I could see a fiery sun just beginning its descent on what I took to be the western horizon. Unlike JFK, the airport was positively bustling, with wide-waisted families plodding in every possible direction. One clearly related crew all sporting matching leather cowboy hats—even the toddler in the stroller—was the only real sign that we had crossed into the West.

“I can't believe I'm back.” Ashleigh took her backpack from me and finished drying her hands on her sky-blue jeans.

“I can't believe I'm here,” I said.

“What? It's a nice airport.”

“An oxymoron.” We started walking toward the baggage claim where Krystal was due to meet us. We rode the moving walkways and stared at the
Tribute to the American Indian
photo exhibit that lined the walls. Near the security check was a store called West of Brooklyn. “You're kidding me,” I said to Ashleigh, gesturing toward it.

“I thought of you yesterday when I passed by it,” she said.

“Why would they call a store that?”

“Why not? It's accurate, isn't it?”

“Well, technically.” I glanced inside as we passed by: just the usual assortment of beauty magazines, paperweights, and oversize wolf T-shirts. Why did stores continue to sell wolf T-shirts? Did anyone actually wear them? “We're west of a lot of things,” I said. “St. Louis, Chicago, Kuala Lumpur…”

“Maybe it's a tribute to you.”

“Huh,” I said. “Maybe.”

 

Down in the heavily air-conditioned baggage claim there was no sign of Krystal—though no shortage of people who could legitimately be
named
Krystal.

“Do you think she's on her way?” I asked, starting to get a nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“Maybe.” Ashleigh, was back in full-on deer mode, her eyes wide and darting around the crowd. “Oh gosh, that guy is totally from our church!”

“What? Where?”

Ashleigh darted behind me and lifted up the hood on her sweatshirt. “The
guy
! The blond guy!”

My eyes scanned the entire length and breadth of the baggage-claim hall trying to pinpoint the exact blond “guy” who had Ashleigh so agitated. That was probably when I first noticed:
all
the guys were blond guys. There was a creepy monotony to the face of every adult male around us: freshly scrubbed, apple-cheeked, hair perfectly coiffed, and a shiny blue, matte finish to the eyes that made it look like either the pupils were made out of glass or kept under a protective coating of it. Still, I tried to act reassuring, and I let my vision settle on a harried-looking fellow who was making his way through the revolving doors. “Don't worry,” I said as his proud blond mane disappeared into a waiting cab. “Um, he's gone.”

“He is?” Ashleigh peeked around from behind me.

“I think so.”

I must have picked the correct head of hair, because Ashleigh seemed genuinely relieved. “That was close! I'm gonna go call Krys's cell phone. She should be here by now.”

“OK,” I said. And while I waited, I flipped through some more of Rulon's choice passages:

Phew. I was tired just reading all of that. Still, it did seem pretty—and more than a little interesting. It was a shame that I wasn't going to be able to see any of this city that I had just paid a fortune to fly to. Oh, well. Maybe another time.

But then I caught sight of Ashleigh walking back toward me, a warily apologetic half-smile on her face. And I wondered if I wasn't going to get a chance to prove Rulon wrong after all.

 

“She had to go to the dentist?”

Ashleigh was explaining to me why Krystal wasn't at the airport and wouldn't, in fact, be coming to the airport at all. But it was taking an inordinate amount of time to sink in.

“Yes.” Ashleigh chewed her fingernail thoughtfully.

“Because she hurt herself.”

“No, because her brother hurt himself.”

“In the teeth.”

“Yeah.” She tried to smile. “In the teeth.”

“Why would anyone try to skateboard on their hands?”

“There's not that much to do here.”

“I guess not.” I rubbed my forehead. “But really he should have tried to land on something other than his mouth.”

Ashleigh shook her head. “He's an idiot.”

“Well, he's screwed us, that's for sure. How are we going to get you home?” Ashleigh flashed me her pony-buying pout. “Aw, man…”

It was surprisingly easy to rent a car in Salt Lake City, and if the people at the emergency credit card company minded this sudden flurry of activity, they didn't let me or the twenty-year-old ski bum manning the counter know about it. I had walked the length of rental-car hall—located across the street from the terminal—watching the names go from classy to ashy. Thrifty. Budget. Dollar. I had peeked around a corner looking for Busted, Cheap-Ass, or Broke, but, not seeing them, had settled for Dollar. After declining the insurance in triplicate, I walked with Ashleigh out the back door into a sweltering garage full of bland rental vehicles, most of which were outfitted with racks and hooks for ski equipment. All the license plates said “Utah!” just like my guidebook, and I shook my head. The only state in the union that felt the need to stick on an exclamation point right after its name for extra flash, and I was stuck in it.